


Train 65 à destination de Toronto

by sylviarachel



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 08:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6463339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviarachel/pseuds/sylviarachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bitty's in Georgia with his parents, and Jack's on a train from Montreal to Toronto. They skype, and talk about closure, conflict, and coming out.</p><p>Or, what my brain came up with when I was struggling to meet a deadline for my publisher ::shakes fist at brain::</p><p><b>Edited</b> for some objectionable uses of "y'all", as my Canadian self tries to figure out this Southern thing with some assists from friendly commenters ;)</p><p>Characters, setting, etc., property of the amazing <a href="http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/about">ngoziu</a>!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Train 65 à destination de Toronto

Jack's parents are in the row ahead of him on the train to Toronto. The seat across the aisle from Jack is empty from the Gare Centrale to Dorval, at which point an elderly woman in a purple sweater boards the train and takes about fifteen minutes to settle in herself and all her stuff.

Then she argues in English with the steward about something--Jack turns up the volume on his earbuds so he won't be tempted to listen--and then she takes a sandwich out of a tupperware container and eats it. And _then_ she puts away the empty tupperware, gets out a bright pink plastic folder exploding with papers, and opens it on the little fold-out tray in front of her. For the rest of the way from Dorval to Oshawa, she takes papers out of the folder one at a time, reads each one over--sometimes making notes in the margins--then methodically tears it into quarters, then eighths, and finally stuffs the pieces into a plastic bag from Jean Coutu tucked between her ribcage and the arm of her seat. It's inexplicable and weirdly mesmerizing, and Jack has to make an effort not to stare.

*

 _There was this woman on my train_ , he texts Bitty later, and describes her. _Why would someone do that?_

Almost instantly (Jack smiles a little, because _of course_ Bitty's phone was already in his hand when he got Jack's texts) the little grey bubble with the three pulsing dots pops up. Then it disappears again--reappears and disappears twice more--and only after several minutes is it replaced with an actual message:

_I don't know. Maybe ... closure?_

Jack, sitting by himself on the edge of a hotel-room bed in Toronto, stares at the text for a minute, or possibly quite a bit longer than that. He thinks about Rimouski, and Kenny, and Ativan, and getting up in the middle of the night to watch tape of the 2009 NHL draft on maman's iPad, with earbuds, so his parents and his therapist wouldn't know he'd done it, pausing and replaying the #1 pick over and over, trying to read something, anything, in Kenny's expression. About Kenny coming to Samwell to gloat about winning the _maudite_ Stanley Cup, and then coming _back_ to ... what? Recruit Jack? Fuck with him? Jack still hasn't entirely figured that one out--in fact, he's not sure Kenny really knew what he was there for.

Would things have been better, sooner, if there had been papers he could've read over, scribbled on, torn up and thrown away? Or if ... 

If Jack had been able to say out loud--to his parents, to his therapist, to his Samwell teammates-- _câlice,_ even to _Kenny_ \--what the two of them actually were to each other, back in the Q? Say it out loud, and, like, get over it?

 _Okay_ , he types, slowly. _I think I get that._

This time Bitty's reply is immediate:

_Oh, honey <3 U_U_

Jack frowns at his phone, then types, _Pardon?_

The phone buzzes: incoming Skype call from ERB.

"Hello?" Jack says, wary, as Bitty's face appears on the tiny phone screen.

"Are you okay, Jack?" says Bitty. He sounds extra Southern after two weeks in Georgia with his parents.

"Yes," says Jack automatically; and then, because he doesn't want to lie to Bitty, even sort of, "I mean. I was thinking about ... some things ... not, like, really happy things. Um. But I am okay. Um." He feels his face going warm and red, but makes himself go on, say the next true thing: "Better now that we're talking."

Bitty's face disappears from camera range, and there's a sound from the end of the call that Jack can't immediately identify.

"Bitty?" he says, alarmed. "Bitty, what--"

"Okay, now I _know_ you ain't quite right," says Bitty, coming back into view with red cheeks and shiny eyes, and it's his chirping tone, but the clogged sound of his voice tells Jack that that unidentifiable noise was maybe something like a sob. "You never call me that unless it's serious."

And Jack can't really argue with that analysis, can he? Bitty has been _Bitty_ in Jack's head for a long time now, but out loud ... not so much. It's like, if he lets the wider universe know how much Bitty _matters_ to him, then the wider universe will somehow conspire to take Bitty away.

But maybe ... maybe, Jack thinks, frowning at himself this time, that's not the best way--not the _most adult_ way--to approach important things?

"Sorry," Jack says, and Bitty laughs at him.

"Jack, honey," he says, "what are we doing here?"

"I slept with Kent Parson," Jack says, all in a rush, before he can chicken out again.

Bitty's mouth falls open, with a little sound like he's taken a hard hit, and Jack realizes he's really fucked up. "No!" he says, louder than he intended. "No, I mean--not recently. A long time ago, when we were in the Juniors together. Before the '09 draft. Before I ... before."

A long, relieved exhale from Madison, Georgia.

"Oh," says Bitty, looking uncertain. "Yeah, I ... I kinda wondered, after ... um. Thank you for telling me."

"It was ... it wasn't good," Jack continues, not quite looking at his phone. "I mean, for a while it was, it was _great_ , and then it was ..."

"Not great?" Bitty suggests, when the pause goes on a little too long.

"Yeah," says Jack. "Really not great. You remember what I said, that time, that he and I owe each other a lot of apologies?"

"Of course I do," says Bitty, and, yeah, of course he does.

"Well, I think. I think ... we'd have less to apologize for if we'd been better at talking about ... um ... not hockey?"

Bitty chuckles, but kindly. "Probably," he says.

"And I think," Jack says, emboldened, "I think it would've been better, maybe, if we hadn't been each other's dirty little secret. If anyone had known Parse didn't just find his _friend_ passed out on the bathroom floor. If, like, I'd been able to talk to my parents about ... oh, fuck, I don't know. I just--"

"I get it, Jack," says Bitty quietly. "I do."

But he looks sad and sounds tired, which means he _doesn't_ get it.

"No," Jack says again. Ugh, why is English? Why are _words_? "I mean--I mean if we're doing this, I want to be able to tell people. I don't want to hide you, and I don't ... I don't want to hide _me._ But. But if you, if you need to--I still--"

"Jack, honey, have you thought this all the way through?" says Bitty, and of course he's right, Jack sort of hasn't. "Aren't the Falconers gonna have something to say about their star rookie suddenly having a boyfriend?"

"It's not sudden," says Jack, "and I don't care."

But of course that second thing is ... not a lie, no, but also not a hundred percent true. He's a public figure, like it or not, and no matter how much he wishes he didn't care what his new teammates think of him, what the Falconers management thinks, what their _fans_ think, he ... well, he sort of has to.

"Okay," he says. "Let me try to ... okay." He makes himself look directly at Bitty's face. "The thing is, Bitty--Eric--the thing is, I love you."

"Jack--"

"I mean--I don't mean," he sucks in a breath, tries to mimic Shitty's stoned-Boston-Brahmin shtick: " _Bruh, I looove you and your piiiiiiies._ I mean ... I mean I'm in love with you."

Bitty turns his face away from the camera; there's a long silence from his end of the call, and then a loud sniffling sound, and then, just as Jack is getting really alarmed again, he faces his phone again and says, "Oh, sweetheart," and there are tears on his face and his voice is breaking. "I love you too, Jack Zimmermann. You gotta know that. Lord, it's been so long, I can't even remember what it feels like not to."

Jack exhales in a whoosh, puzzle pieces fitting themselves together in his brain to make a picture that says loud and clear, _It wasn't just me this whole time_.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. So. If you need to, um, to not be publicly out in Georgia, if it's not safe, then that's--I mean, it's not _okay_ , it's shitty and unfair, but whatever you need in order to be safe, okay? And I know there's going to have to be, like, a PR strategy. Or whatever. But if you were thinking that _I_ wanted to hide ... this ... from anyone, I don't."

"You'd ... you'd want to be out in the NHL?" Bitty sounds ... awed, Jack decides, is the best way to put it. And also looks terrified. "I mean ... I'm up for it if you are. I am, okay? It just seems like being the league's first out gay player, or, or bi player? would be, like, more media and PR shit that you maybe don't need when you're just tryin' to play hockey, I guess? But, um." He clears his throat, sniffles again. "I'm with you, if you want me."

"I do," Jack says, looking earnestly at Bitty and trying to fit everything he's feeling into the completely inadequate structure of words. "I really, really do. Also," he adds, and he can't quite help a nervous little chuckle, "according to Shitty, what I actually am is a biromantic demisexual."

"Um?"

Bitty's baffled tone makes Jack laugh for real.

"Yeah, that's basically what I said when Shitty started throwing terms like that at me in our frog year," he says.

Now Bitty's giggling. It's adorable. "Did--did Shitty seriously _mansplain your own sexuality_ to you?" he demands, breathless between giggles. "And you didn't deck him?"

"Uh. Kind of? I suppose?" Jack shrugs. He half wishes Bitty couldn't see him, because this is a fucking embarrassing conversation they're having. If it were anyone but Bitty he were trying to say this shit to, he'd have spontaneously combusted from the humiliation ten minutes ago. He looks up at the ceiling. "I mean ... I knew that about myself, I think? That, um, I'm not into sex unless it's with someone I, um, have strong feelings for? And, um, it's mostly been guys, but not always? But I didn't know there was a _name_ for that. Other than, like, _hockey robot_."

"Okay," says Bitty, nodding. "Yeah, I get that."

"Anyway. So when I said it's not sudden? I meant ... I'm not always very good at feelings. Knowing what they are, I mean. But as soon as I realized what I was feeling--about you, I mean--I knew I'd felt that way for a long time. And I'm sorry if this is too much, too soon, but I just, can you just let me say this--"

Bitty doesn't object, just looks at him wide-eyed and goes _Hmm?_ , so Jack ploughs ahead: "I'm really serious about this. About you. About, um, us. Just ... just so you know."

Bitty squeezes his eyes shut, his mouth turns down at the corners, and Jack can hear him breathing hard. Then he turns away again--then there's a _clunk_ , and then, very faintly, the sound of someone blowing their nose, and then Bitty, finally, reappears and says, in a watery, wavery voice that makes Jack's heart clench: "Jack Laurent Zimmermann, you are much too far away to be saying things like that to me."

"I'm ... sorry?" Jack tries.

"Oh, sweetheart." Bitty wipes one eye with the back of a hand. "Don't you ever be sorry for bein' your sweet dorky self."

Jack's quiet for a moment, trying to figure out whether that was a chirp or a compliment or some weird, Bitty-esque combination of both.

"In case you were wondering?" says Bitty, after a bit. He smiles, and it's a pale, computer-mediated imitation of his big Bitty grin, but it's _real_. "All that stuff you just said? Me too, Jack. Me too."

And this, _tabarnac_ , this is a whole new thing: Jack Zimmermann talking about his feelings, using actual words, and Eric Bittle reduced to _me too_?

"I miss you so much." The words just _fall_ out of Jack's mouth, with no input from his brain.

"I miss you too," says Bitty.

"I'm not trying to, um. To rush you into anything. Okay?" And Jack's back to falling over his words again, which is annoying but kind of reassuringly normal, too. "I just. We'll figure it out, all right? I'll talk to George, see what she says. And my parents. And you think about it and, and tell me what you feel okay with."

"Your _parents_?" Bitty's eyes are wide again, and he sounds ... what? Sort of breathless. "You told your parents?"

"Um. Not really?" Jack feels wrong-footed, because until right this minute it hadn't occurred to him to ask if Bitty was okay with Jack's parents knowing, and now it's too late. "I just ... didn't lie when they asked. I, um. I'm sorry I didn't ask you first, but--"

"No, Jack, no. I don't want you to lie to your parents, Lord." He still sounds breathless, but he's smiling again, and Jack smiles too. "Are they ... okay about it?"

"Bitty, my parents adore you," Jack says, because how can Bitty not _know_ that?

"Well," says Bitty. "I mean. That was when I was your friend--"

"Bitty."

"Mmm?"

"After graduation, when I ran back to the Haus to, um, to say goodbye? My dad knew where I was going. He's the one who said I should follow my heart."

Bitty gulps and sniffles again, and ducks out of camera range. Jack waits a minute or so, listening and trying not to be anxious, before Bitty reappears, dry-eyed, and says, "I'm not sure how I feel about Bad Bob Zimmermann secretly being a big ol' romantic."

"If it makes you feel any ... less weird about it," says Jack, "what he actually said was, _Remember what your uncle always says: You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take_. Except he said it in French."

Bitty stares, then bursts into half-hysterical laughter.

"What?" Jack says. Not being anxious is getting trickier; this long-distance thing is going to _suck_ , _câlice_.

"Jack--Jack, that's a _Wayne Gretzky quote_. A _famous_ Wayne Gretzky quote. Dex has it on a poster in his room."

" _Et pis après_?" says Jack automatically.

And Bitty seems to get what he means, somehow, because he says, still half-laughing, "I guess I'm gonna have to get used to you and your celebrity 'uncles', huh?"

"Heh. I guess."

For a little while they just smile at each other and breathe together. Jack imagines Bitty's soft hair under his cheek, Bitty's warm little hands on his shoulder and his waist, the way Bitty always smells a little bit like butter and cinnamon and vanilla and a little bit like his fancy shampoo and, underneath all that, completely like _himself_ , and before he knows it, the anxiety's gone and he feels warm and relaxed all over.

"Jack," Bitty says, his voice warm and a little hesitant, "you're still coming down in July, right?"

Jack sits up straighter. "Of course I am. I mean, unless you don't--"

"Jack. _Stop_. Of course I want you to." Bitty pauses, takes a deep breath. "It's just. I ... haven't told my parents yet."

Pause. Bitty looks away.

"About us?"

Pause.

"About ... _me._ "

"Oh." _Oh_. That's ... _Crisse_. No wonder Bitty was so hesitant about--

"So ... I need to do that," Bitty continues, "because you're right, Jack, hiding is shitty and awful. And ... and I don't know how."

"Um," says Jack. "You're not ... like ... asking me for advice, are you? Because I am literally the _worst person_ to ask for advice about that."

"I wasn't ..." Bitty laughs again, but not in a happy way. "Or maybe I was? Or, like ... not so much _advice_ , as moral support?" He's quiet for a moment, then says, "How'd you tell your parents?"

Jack shrugs. "I didn't exactly tell them," he says. "But, you know. They knew when I dated girls, and they knew about K-- about Parse, so."

"Like, you just ... casually mentioned him on the phone or something?" Bitty looks thunderstruck, and it breaks Jack's heart a little bit, that the out-and-proud Eric Bittle of Samwell has also had twenty years of life experiences that make saying the words _I have a boyfriend_ to his parents seem like this big, huge, scary deal.

Although of course that's not actually what Jack did. At all.

"No," he says. "More like ... I was skyping my mom, with headphones, from our hotel room during a roadie, and he came out of the washroom and, like ..." He swallows. "Kissed me hello. I mean just on the ear, you know? He thought I was just watching a movie."

"Oh my _God_ , Jack!" Bitty's big brown eyes widen in alarm. "What did she _say_?"

"Um ... 'Honey, are you going to introduce me to your _chum_?'"

" _Chum_?" Bitty's really giggling now. "Like," he attempts an upper-class British accent that's much, much worse than Jack's attempt to mimic stoned!Shitty, " _What do you say, old chum_?"

"No," says Jack, laughing too. "I know in English it just means 'friend', but in French it means _boyfriend_."

"Oh my god," Bitty says again. "And, um ... did you?"

"Well ... yeah," says Jack. "Obviously." It's sort of a chirp: _Oh, as if_ you _could say no to my mother either, Bittle._

"Jack." Bitty's gone back to his serious-and-uncertain voice again. It's a bit worrying, but, on the other hand, Jack feels a certain amount of warm pride that he _knows_ all these voices of Bitty's, and all the faces that go with them. "Jack, was he? Your boyfriend? Or was it more like ... hooking up?"

Jack looks up at the ceiling and doesn't answer right away, and Bitty seems to take this to mean he's overstepped somehow, because he starts babbling apologies and _it's not my business_ es and _you don't have to_ s.

"No, it's fine," Jack says, to make him stop. "It is your business. I was just, you know. Thinking."

"Oh," says Bitty. "Okay."

And he waits, _câlice_ , Jack does not deserve this boy. At all. But he's going to fight like hell to hang onto him, he decides, as long as Bitty wants to be hung onto.

"It's complicated," he says, finally, which makes Bitty chuckle, why? "Like, we never _told_ anybody. And we didn't talk about it, much? So I guess it wasn't, like, official. But neither of us slept with anybody else while we were sleeping with each other, so." _At least, I know_ I _didn't._ "In my head, he was definitely my boyfriend."

"And ... in his head?"

Jack sighs, suddenly _just so tired_ of this whole subject. "Who the fuck knows," he says. "We were both shit at it, you know? I mean, I'll probably still be shit at it, but. Kenny and I, we were young and stupid and drank too much and--"

"Jack," says Bitty.

"Yeah?"

"In my head, you're my boyfriend." Bitty's smile is all over his face, now, in his eyes and in his voice, and Jack smiles back with his whole self.

"Okay," he says.

"Just so we're clear."

"Um, Bitty?"

"Yes, Jack?"

"In my head,  you're my boyfriend, too." Jack hesitates over the next thing, but he's basically already put everything out there, so why the hell not? "Listen, I don't expect to have to choose between playing hockey and being your boyfriend, okay? But just so we're clear. If that _did_ happen. Which it won't. But if it did ... I choose you."

This time Bitty makes absolutely no effort to pretend he isn't crying.

"Jack Laurent Zimmermann," he says, after a little while, "you are going to be a _fabulous_ boyfriend."

And somehow, right then, Jack believes him.

*

The next day, Jack books a ticket to Atlanta. He forwards the confirmation email to Bitty, and gets a message back almost right away that just says, _I CANNOT WAIT. <3_

Then he sends a text: _Hey, Kenny. Can we talk? I have something to say._

**Author's Note:**

> Jean Coutu is a pharmacy/drugstore chain in Québec.  
>  _Et pis après_ is a Québécois expression roughly equivalent to the Yiddish _Nu?_ or the English _So?_ or _And?_  
>  _Câlice_ [chalice] and _tabarnac_ [tabernacle] are Québécois swear words.  
>  _Chum_ sounds like it means "friend", but actually means "boyfriend" (the equivalent term for a girlfriend is, weirdly, _blonde_ ). One can also say _copain / copine_ , but that would offer less scope for mistranslation ;)


End file.
